Sometimes nothin’ can be a real cool hand

One of my favorite movies of all times is Cool Hand Luke. The subject of this blog post has nothing to do with the movie, of course, but the quote from the character played by Paul Newman seemed like a good title for describing the topic of keeping your email inbox clean/

Lately I have been trying to simplify my life. Too much clutter, too much BS. I need a much simpler existance. Aside from trying to keep my office cleaner, the other source of clutter in my life is the three email inboxes. My goal now is to reduce that clutter to (near) zero. While I’m not sure I can get the inboxes to zero and keep it there, my current goal is to keep at least the work-related inboxes down to no more than 10 items.

Some rather brutal tips for handling email can be found on this 43 Folders article. I think for me, applying the tips aren’t hard, because when I was cleaning out hundreds of emails in my inbox, I was essentially applying the same tips. It’s having the discipline to make sure I clean out my inbox every day. Sort of like making sure I exercise every day.